Another way to reduce gas mileage is with engineering.

Most of the roads we drive on were designed in an era of cheap gas, anyone remember paying 29.9 cents a gallon? I do. Of course I had to drive a few miles into another sate, but it was worth it when I was saving 10% on my gasoline purchases.

One of the suggestions that I would like to make is to straighten the roads. There is a stretch or road I drive that is a state highway, soon to be changed over to an interstate. The span that I drive is approximately 139 miles according to MapQuest.

After driving this road for over twenty years, a number of times late at night when there is not much traffic I have used racing techniques. Now I am not condoning unsafe behavior, but I did this to prove the point about re-engineering the roads. Depending on how much traffic there is, both auto and animal, I have decreased the mileage driven by 2 – 10 miles.

I know that decreasing the miles driven by 2 – 10 miles, but if the road was re-engineered and a thousand (very low estimate) cars use this road a day then we have reduced miles driven by 2,000 – 10,000 miles. In a year that is 730,000 – 3,650,000 miles not driven and that is only one aspect of re-engineering.

Here is where I need help from someone who loves math. There is another aspect of engineering that should be looked at and that is elevation of the roads we drive on.

If the above drawing (anyone has a better drawing and would like it posted here, or knows a better way to create drawings let me know) shows changes in elevation on the road driven, what would happen if the road was leveled off? I am not talking about making the road a straight level line, but if you cut a hundred feet off of the top and added a hundred feet in the low areas what would that mean over a 140 mile highway?

Now look that the highest peak, what would you do to improve the road? What would happen, how many miles would be saved by tunneling where appropriate? I am not talking about The Big Dig or maybe I am.

Here are other areas that could be looked at and if you know about any of these

• The pavement material?
  
• What surrounds the road?
  
• etc.
  

or any other factors for re-engineering the roads, let us know.

If we can reduce our gasoline consumption by a messily 1%, we could save approximately 86,000 gallons a day.

• Day – 86,000 gallons
  
• Week – 602,000 gallons
  
• Month – 2,580,000 gallons (30 days)
  
• Year – 31,390,000 gallons (30 days)
  

Now remember we were talking about setting a goal here, your goals may very and may not be duplicated by other drivers. So now that that is done, how do you save 1% on you mileage?

We are the cheapest way is to improve automobile mileage, simply put the way that we drive. Here are some of the ways that you can save gasoline that I have gathered from the internet.

• Aggressive Driving vs. Moderate Driving Avearge savings of 31%
  
• Observe the speed Limit Avearge savings of 7 - 23%
  
• Reduce weight, for every 100 pounds you get an avearge savings of 2%
  
• Use cruise control selectively
  
• Change Your Motor Oil and Air Filter Regularly
  
• Go easy on the brakes and gas pedal
  

Listed above are a few ways to lower your gasoline consumptionor improve your mileage, which I found in less than an hour. What can you come up with?

Tackling the one’s own problems, as with taking on the problems the world face everyday can be an insurmountable task unless you change the way you look at them. That is what we would like to do here on this site, change the way that you look at problems. So since every journey starts with a single step, let’s start walking. Let’s tackle one of those big insurmountable problems, but before we do that lets look at it in a different manner, instead of calling it a problem let’s call it a:

• Challenge
  
• Test
  
• Contest
  
• Competition
  

Reducing gasoline usage use in America or improved gas milage. Whoa, let’s backup there and try something a little smaller. Sorry, but my greatest strength as well as my biggest weakness has always been dreaming big, so to paraphrase Martin Luther King, “I have a dream.”

So let's start dreaming by breaking down the challenge into at more manageable parts making the challenge easier to see and hopefully solve. Here are the three parts I can think of:

• Goal
  
• Benefits
  
• How
  

In the week of October 12th 2007, American’s used approximately 8,864,000 gallons of gasoline as stated by the Energy Information Administration. So start thinking about how to initiate gasoline reduction, gas saving tips, and gas saving devices or products.